In
that last chapters and as the book was ending I began to wonder what
Steinbeck's real purpose was for writing this novel about the Great
Depression. During The Grapes of Wrath
the story of families and the description of hardships are a main
part of the story. However it wasn't toward the end of the book when
I really saw what the novel was maybe written about. Towards the end
of the book there are several chapters that really get into the
political side of the Great Depression. Steinbeck has been known for
his Marxist views but for my opinion they have been kept out of his
writing, in this book anyway. There were many political and economic
things that were wrong with how the Great Depression was treated and
we start to see Steinbeck's views come out in characters and
especially in the chapters in between the Joad's plot line. Starting
in chapter twenty five when the destroying of the crop and how the
people were kept from it, we start to feel and Steinbeck artfully
guides us to take his side of things. The injustice described in that
chapter is a stark difference from the rest of the novel because it
depicts it so well and completely. “A million people hungry,
needing fruit-and kerosene sprayed over the gokden mountains. And the
smell of rot fills the country”(448). I believe that the whole book
was used to get the reader and audience to empathize with the
migrants, and then to join the cause as the injustices were described
at the end of the book. I also see another angle, an angle of hope
for the future. Steinbeck wrote this book in the middle of the
Depression were he could still see its effects and his world. At the
end of the chapters a strong image of green grass growing up after a
hard winter is very hopeful feel toward the situation. “Tiny points
if grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were
pale green with the beginning year”(556). This end of the chapter
is very hopeful for a new future without hardships and a new earth to
live in.
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